Friday, 16 January 2009
07:51

The Maldives Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) on Wednesday terminated the contract made to lease Addu atoll Herethere (Handhufushi) to Yacht Tours and gave the company seven days to handover the resort.At a news conference held at Dharubaaruge on Wednesday, MTDC officials said that the decision had been made by the new Board of Directors.“Today we have notified them by letter of the termination of the contract,” the MTDC’s lawyer Shaheen Hameed said.Shaheen also said that if the company does not handover the resort before the deadline then the matter will be taken to Court. He said that even though Yacht Tours had filed a claim for compensation, it was the company that had breached the agreement and that there was no money that the MTDC had to pay.A statement issued by the MTDC said that the newly comprised Board of Directors of MTDC had at Tuesday’s meeting given top priority to the issue of Yacht Tours not paying the rent due and what to do after the notice period issued last month had expired. The notice issued to Yacht Tours states that the contract agreement would be terminated if the rent was not paid by Tuesday. The MTDC’s statement said that six of the seven members had voted to go ahead as per the notice.Speaking at the news conference, the MTDC’s Managing Director Mohamed Mihad said that the MTDC had kept their part of the agreement and fulfilled all the contractual obligations.“The only thing that remained for the MTDC to do before 30th November 2008 was the creation of the channel,” Mihad said. “It was done on schedule.”He also said that the Board had decided to terminate the contract because they did not feel it was a good idea to decrease rent as Yacht Tours had proposed and that it was in the best interests of the shareholders too.